1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to manufacturing methods in general, and more particularly to a method for manufacturing a multi-piece article, such as a garment, with the assistance of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In a production facility manufacturing multi-part articles, such as articles of clothing (or garments), a number of components (or parts) are connected together through different manufacturing operations. A typical example of such a production facility is a ready to wear garment manufacturing factory, where various components of garments, such as men's jackets, are cut and sewn together. In such factories, a roll of wool or other fabric (cloth) suitable for the jacket is supplied in 60 yard rolls (sometimes more, sometimes less), about 60 inches wide, and the jacket would require about 2 yards of cloth, depending on factors such as size and style, e.g. single or double breasted. In ready to wear manufacturing multiple garment components are cut from the rolls of fabric at one time by means of a marker (similar to a template), on which the patterns for each size and style of the garment are traced. There could be five different sizes on the same marker which would require a 10 yard length of cloth (ply) and it is customary to stack multiple plies, the height of the stack being limited by the cutting technique (band saw, straight or circular knife cutting machine, etc.) which will cut around the individual pieces as drawn on the marker. If twenty plies were stacked to produce 100 jackets then multiple rolls of cloth would be required and these are frequently from different dye lots. Therefore cloth for a navy blazer from different dye lots may appear superficially the same but if a sleeve from dye lot A was sewn to a jacket body from dye lot B, then there may be a noticeable difference when the parts are in juxtaposition. A similar error could occur if incorrectly sized parts were sewn together, e.g. a back from a 38″ chest jacket with foreparts (fronts) from a 42″ chest jacket.
While known manufacturing methods for manufacturing multi-part articles, including but not limited to those discussed above, have proven to be acceptable for various applications, such manufacturing methods are nevertheless amenable to improvements.
Various technologies have been developed for identifying and tracking objects. The most common involves application of identifying bar codes to objects and optically scanning those codes to identify the objects or certain other relevant coded characteristics, e.g., size, model, price, etc. A more recent development is radio frequency identification technology, commonly known as RFID technology. RFID devices, commonly called RFID tags, are thin transponders (transceivers) that include an integrated circuit chip having RF (radio frequency) circuits, control logic and memory, plus an antenna, all mounted on a supporting substrate. RFID devices are either of the active type or passive type. The active type RFID tags include a battery for powering a transceiver. The passive type RFID tags have no battery and derive its energy from the RF signal used to interrogate it. The RFID transponder operates to receive, store and transmit object-identifying data to and from the memory within the chip. The device functions in response to coded RF signals received from a base station. Typically it reflects the incident RE carrier back to the base station, and information stored in the device is transmitted back to the interrogating base station by modulating the reflected signal according to the programmed information protocol.
Recent developments have produced thin RFID tags on flexible organic substrates, with the overall thickness of the tags being of the order of a fraction of a millimeter, typically about 1.5 mils thick. Various materials have been used as the organic substrate of commercial REID tags, including but not limited to thin flexible films of a polyester such as Mylar®™ or a polyimide such as Kapton®™. The antenna may comprise pre-formed wires that are attached to the substrate, but more commonly it is a thin film element, usually consisting of 25 to 25 micron thick copper lines formed by plating copper onto the flexible organic substrate or by etching in the case where the substrate is a copper/organic material laminate. Further information regarding the manufacture and use of RFID transponders is provided by U.S. Pat. No. 5,497,140, issued Mar. 5, 1996 to J. R. Tuttle; U.S. Pat. No. 5,528,222, issued Jun. 18, 1996 to P. A. Moskowitz et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,566,441, issued Oct. 22, 1996 to M. J. C. Marsh et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,661,473, issued Aug. 26, 1997 to J. P. Paschal; U.S. Pat. No. 5,682,143, issued Oct. 28, 1997 to M. J. Brady et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,955,951, issued Sep. 21, 1999, and U.S. Pat. No. 6,018,299, issued Jan. 25, 2000 to N. H. Eberhardt. The greatest disadvantage of bar codes is that they are not dynamic carriers of information, require direct or proximal line of sight contact for reading and are adversely impacted by dirt, grime and soiling. With bar codes the stored information is static. Consequently information stored in bar codes on an object cannot be updated as it travels, for example, from a shipper to a receiver. In contrast, RFID tags are programmable and offer the capability of updating recorded information at any time and in real time. The information stored in the RFID tag may be updated using a writing device to wirelessly transmit the new information to be stored. Updating information in bar code tags typically requires printing a new tag to replace the old. RFID transponders are of particular value to industries that need to quickly and accurately track and manage very large numbers of objects. The passive type of RFID tag is particularly valuable in relation to inventory management and control because it offers a long life data storage and retrieval capability, since it draws its energy and transfers information in the form of low power radio waves resulting from operation of the read/write module of a base station.
Small lightweight RFID foil tags have long been implemented in security systems in retail stores. The foil RFID tag is secured to a product and is capable of storing information regarding the product or sale status. A RFID interrogator is used to read the tag, record the sale of the item, and write to the tag to change the status to purchased, to allow the product and tag to leave the store without tripping the stores security alert system. The technology to use such RFID tags for inventory and assembly lines etc. are known in the art to facilitate reading and writing to small RFID foil tags without contact and without the need for a power supply to the tag itself Rather, the tag relies on modulated radio frequencies from the RFID reader/writer to exchange information. Various RFID systems are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,717,507; 6,806,808; 5,055,659; 5,030,807; 6,107,910; 6,580,358; and 6,778,847 each of which are hereby incorporated herein by reference.
RFID tags are rapidly becoming the preferred method of inventory tracking in retail and distribution applications and will likely surpass bar codes as the preferred point-of-sale checkout identifier. For example, bar codes are limited in size by resolution limitations of bar code scanners, and the amount of information that the symbols can contain is limited by the physical space constraints of the label. Therefore, some objects (products or merchandise) may be unable to accommodate bar code labels because of their size and physical configuration. In contrast, RFID tags store their information in digital memory. Thus, they can be made much smaller than bar code tags.
With this in mind, a need exists to develop a manufacturing method for manufacturing multi-part articles that advance the art, such as a method for manufacturing articles of clothing (or garments) using RFID tags.